Luke 6:45b “…for out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” ESV One of the most challenging aspects of responsibility is ownership. It seems that we would, more times than not, rather attribute what we say and think to others “coercion” of us as if we had no choice. Otherwise WE will have to accept full responsibility for our words and actions…which is quite a lot of responsibility indeed. Another way of saying this is, that what comes out of our mouth is coming directly from our heart. When we try to avoid this ownership we are just using smoke and mirrors. A recent court ruling has brought this to the forefront in a most interesting way. Colorado as a state has legalized marijuana and California has given a lot of leeway to marijuana for “medicinal” purposes. While many verbally push back against these changes, they are unwilling to acknowledge a bit of hypocrisy. “Marijuana is a drug after all!” Yes, but so is alcohol and it seems to be misused quite regularly by some of the same folks who are crying foul about the other drug. So what’s the point? The point is being honest with ourselves about what is going on in our heart. It is taking ownership and responsibility for our own attitude and decisions. Some recent entrepreneurial-minded Girl Scouts set up shop to sell their cookies just outside a Bay area medical marijuana dispensary. (World, March 22^nd, 2014) Yeah, you guessed it. They doubled their sales over the previous year in the same amount of time. Who said young people today have lost their competitive edge!  Of course the Girl Scout organization learned of the strategy and quickly put a halt to the practice before their image went up in smoke. I believe this was a good decision by the Girl Scouts for multiple reasons. I also want to point out that I am not personally condoning the use of marijuana. What I am doing is suggesting that we think about the mixed messages we send everyday by our words and actions and be willing to own them or correct them. What message is being sent when we tell our children one thing and then do another? Why do we struggle with owning our words and attitudes? Could it be that deep down we know that we are behaving as a hypocrite? If we take ownership of our words then we will be held accountable and that may be one of the best things that can happen for us. Otherwise our words become just so much smoke and mirrors.